ISLAMABAD, Apr 30: A Pakistani court has allowed a woman to undergo sex change after doctors refused to perform the surgery on her due to a controversy over a similar case.

Naureen Aslam, who noticed early in life that she had more attributes of a male, had sought legal protection after doctors refused to perform gender reassignment surgery on her.

Justice Muhammad Ahsan Bhoon of the Lahore High Court, in a recent ruling, allowed Aslam, who hails form Faisalabad in Punjab province, to undergo the surgery.

Last year, Shumile Raj, who also hailed from the same area, had undergone similar surgery and subsequently married a woman Shehzina Tariq.

However, Raj and Tariq, who had a traditional ‘nikaah’ ceremony and became Pakistan’s first same-sex couple, were punished for perjury by now deposed Justice Khwaja Muhammad Sharif of Lahore High Court.

The Judge also directed action against the doctors who carried out the surgery on Raj.

In Aslam’s case, Nadeem Hassan, Assistant Director General of Health in Islamabad, told the court that she would be provided treatment for gender reassignment.

Hassan also agreed that Aslam’s case was of gender identity disorder.

Aslam is a graduate and is an administrative officer in a school run by her father. When she was about nine years old, she realised she was more like a boy and her parents first consulted a doctor when she was in Class 8. The doctors recommended that she undergo surgery as she suffered from gender identity disorder.

Doctors in Faisalabad referred Aslam to Lahore, where she met a series of doctors before she finally consulted Lt Col Mamoon Rashid, head of the department of plastic surgery and reconstructive surgery at the combined military hospital in Rawalpindi. Rashid recommended a change of gender.

Aslam was to undergo surgery on january 31 this year. However, Rashid refused to operate on her citing the Lahore High Court’s judgment in Raj’s case.

Aslam’s counsel pleaded in court that her case was different from Raj’s and that it would be illegal to deny her treatment.

The Judge accepted this argument and allowed her to undergo a sex change. (PTI)

Sarin, Mittal lead pio brigade on UK
powerful biz leaders list

LONDON, Apr 30:It’s not only the rich lists where persons of Indian origin are making it big in the UK — they have also emerged among the most powerful businessmen of their respective sectors, led by the likes of steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal and telecom Titan Arun Sarin.

While Mittal, recently named UK’s richest persons for fourth year in a row, has been identified as the fifth most powerful in the UK manufacturing business, Sarin has beaten all to grab the top slot in the 100 most powerful persons list for country’s technology and telecom sector.

These are based on the top 100 business people lists currently being published by the daily telegraph newspaper here. The daily is spotlighting UK’s 1,000 most powerful in business and has divided it into ten sectors. The lists of top 100 for each sector is being published in a span of two weeks.

So far, at least 16 persons of Indian origin have made to the various lists published so far, including half a dozen in the healthcare and chemicals sector list, released today.

These include necessity supplies’ co-founders Barat Mehta and Ketan Mehta at 54th and 55th position, Subhanu Saxena, head of Novartis UK, at 65th, Waymade Healthcare’s founder Vijay Patel at 72nd, Jumbogate’s founder Naresh Shah at 91st and Kartar Lavani, head of vitabiotics, at 99th position.

In manufacturing business, where Mittal has been ranked fifth, another India-origin businessman Anil Agrawal, founder and Chairman of Mining giant vedanta, has been ranked 48th, while Philippe Varin, CEO of Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus, now part of Indian conglomerate Tata group, is at 22nd.

"Mittal is the richest man in Britain. He inherited his steel making business from his father, who made a fortune in India despite his humble roots," the daily said.

The 58-year old business head of world’s largest steel maker arcelormittal is "a Labour party donor, and lives in the most expensive house in Britain, which he bought from formula one supreme bernie ecclestone for 57 million pounds".

The publication said that "after witnessing India win only one medal, bronze, in the 2000 olympics, and one medal, silver, at the 2004 olympics, Indian-born Mittal set up Mittal champions trust with nine million dollar to support ten Indian athletes with world-beating potential."

Mittal was separately named this weekend the UK’s richest in the Sunday times rich list for fourth straight year with a net worth of 27.7 billion pounds.

The list for tech and telecom sector, topped by British mobile giant Vodafone’s CEO Arun Sarin, also includes at fourth position Nikesh Arora, internet search giant Google’s Indian-origin president for Europe, Mid-East and Africa, bt group’s group finance director Hanif Lalani at 22nd, and Colt telecom CEO Rakesh Bhasin at 75th.

Terming Vodafone’s Sarin as most powerful in tech and telecom sector, it said that "Indian-born Sarin survived a boardroom rumpus and a slew of shareholder dissent in 2006, but he made 2007 his year".

About google’s 40-year old Nikesh Arora, the daily noted that he is one of the UK firm’s most senior executives outside Silicon Valley and is responsible for Google’s business across 28 offices with a team of more than 2,500 people." (PTI)

EU welcomes Turkey free speech move, seeks more

BRUSSELS, Apr 30: The European Commission welcomed the Turkish Parliament’s amendment of a disputed law used to prosecute writers for "insulting turkishness" but said it sought more changes to ensure such prosecutions stopped.

"This amendment is of course a welcome step forward and the Commission now looks forward to further moves that change similar articles in the penal code, because this article was not the only one addressed ... In order to ensure in fact that unwarranted prosecutions stop," Commission Spokesman Amadeu Altafaj Tardio said today.

"Now the Turkish authorities need to focus on implementation of the reform to guarantee full freedom of expression for all Turkish citizens," he told a news conference. (AGENCIES)

6-party talks likely to resume late May,
says S Korean official

SEOUL, Apr 30: The six-party talks on ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons programmes are likely to resume in late May, Yonhap news agency reported Wednesday, quoting a senior South Korean official.

"I have heard from the US side just a little more final working-level touches need to be done (for the North’s declaration of its nuclear programmes)," said the unidentified official, who is currently visiting the United States.

The official said that countries involved in the six-party talks would read in turn the north’s declaration after North Korea submits the declaration to China, the host of the six-party talks, the official said.

"The six-party talks are likely to be held late next month," the official was quoted as saying.

The six-party talks have been stalled since North Korea missed an end-of-2007 deadline to make a full declaration of its nuclear facilities and programs. The declaration forms part of a six-way deal reached last year in which pyongyang is to take denuclearization steps in return for energy aid and diplomatic benefits. (AGENCIES)

Nepals first vulture breeding
centre established in Chitawan

KATHMANDU, Apr 30: Nepal has established the country’s first vulture breeding centre inside the popular Chitawan national park with a view to maintain a viable population of the bird facing a massive decline.

Some 14 pairs of white-backed vulture, a rare species, captured from Pokhara have been kept in the centre spread in about one hectare area in kasara inside the popular wildlife sanctuary in central nepal, dives bista, an official at the National Nature Conservation Trust said. (PTI)

Crash diets ‘may reduce lifespan’

LONDON, Apr 30: Parents, beware! binge eating and crash dieting could significantly reduce the life expectancy of your kid, a new study has found.

Researchers at Glasgow University have carried out the study on stickleback fish and found that when given a "binge then diet" food regime, their lifespan gets reduced by upto 25 per cent, the `proceedings of the royal society b’ journal reported in its latest edition.

"Applying this to humans, it would only occur in children and teenagers. But it would be for extreme switches in diet. Just skipping lunches would not have any effect, but if they had several weeks of one diet followed by several weeks of the extreme opposite, then there could be an effect," lead researcher Prof Neil Metcalfe said.

In their study, the researchers also found that the difference in lifespan was not a consequence of more rapid ageing but an increase in the risk of sudden death.(PTI)

Alcohol enhances risk-taking behaviour

LONDON, Apr 30: Three glasses of alcohol make a person fearless and enhance risk-taking behaviour, a study said.

The brain scanning study revealed why people are more prepared to take risks when they are intoxicated.

Dr Jodi Gilman and Dr Daniel Hommer at the National Institutes on Alcohol Abuse and alcoholism used a scanner method called functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the resulting changes in activity in emotion-processing brain regions.

In the experiments, the participants received either alcohol, the equivalent of three or four drinks, or a saline solution intravenously over two 45-minute periods, and were shown images of people showing fearful facial expressions.

It was found that when participants received the placebo, fearful facial expressions spurred greater activity than neutral facial expressions in the brain regions involved in fear and avoidance.

However, these regions showed no increased brain activity when the participants were intoxicated, showing they were failing to recognise threats.

Prof Marina Wolf, at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, Chicago Medical School, said, "the key finding of this study is that after alcohol exposure, threat-detecting brain circuits can’t tell the difference between a threatening and non-threatening social stimulus."

"at one end of the spectrum, less anxiety might enable us to approach a new person at a party, but at the other end of the spectrum, we may fail to avoid an argument or a fight," the daily Telegraph quoted her as saying. (UNI)

Genes may help athletes dodge dope tests: Study

NEW YORK, Apr 30: Some athletes might have genes that outwit doping test, researchers say.

According to a new study, 17 out of 55 normal and healthy individuals injected with testosterone tested negative and their urine seemed fine with no excess of the hormone.

It was, researchers were quoted as saying by the New York Times, a striking demonstration of a genetic discovery. Those 17 men can build muscles with testosterone, they respond normally to the hormone, but they are missing both copies of a gene used to convert the testosterone into a form that dissolves in urine.

The result is that they may be able to take testosterone with impunity.

The gene deletion is especially common in Asian men, the paper quoted Jenny Jakobsson Schulze, a molecular geneticist at the Karolinska university hospital in Stockholm as saying.

Schulze is the first author of the testosterone study, published recently in the journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism.

Schulze, the paper said, learned from an earlier study that about two-thirds of Asian men are missing both copies of the gene, as are nearly 10 per cent of Caucasians. The prevalence in other groups is not known.

Doping researchers, however, said the study raised many questions.

"It’s disturbing," said Don Catlin, the Chief Executive of anti-doping research, a non-profit group in Los Angeles.

"Basically, you have a license to cheat," he was quoted as saying by the newspaper. (PTI)

Diplomatic sol to Iran’s nuclear issue
in 6-nation talks: Russia

MOSCOW, Apr 30: russia today expressed the hope that six-nation talks on iranian nuclear programme, which are due to take place in london on friday, will help find a diplomatic solution to the issue.

"I hope it will be a very serious conversation," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak told Interfax news agency today.

The group of six-nations on Iranian nuclear problem includes Russia, China, the US, France, Britain and Germany.

Mr Kislyak said the political directors of the group met in Shanghai in late April. "We have managed to make progress in some things, but it is not final yet. We are hoping the London meeting will speed up this process," he added.

Mr Kislyak pointed out that when the UN Security Council’s resolution 1803— to impose legally binding sanctions on Iran for the proliferation risks presented by its nuclear programme and its failure to suspend its proliferation sensitive nuclear activities— was adopted, the foreign ministers of the group issued a statement emphasising their intention to promote a search for negotiated solutions to the west asian nation’s nuclear issue.

"The participants at the meeting talked about updating the proposals made to Iran in 2006 to promote the search for a diplomatic solution," he said.

"Russia has said many times that the iranian nuclear issue can only be resolved in a diplomatic manner," Mr Kislyak noted. (UNI)

A body image programme that
cuts obesity, eating disorders

NEW YORK, Apr 30: Researchers have developed a body image programme which they claim can reduce the risk for onset of eating disorders by nearly 60 per cent and obesity by 55 per cent in young women.

According to them, the programme, called healthy weight, helps adolescents adopt a healthier lifestyle, wherein they gradually reduce intake of the least healthy portion of their diet and increase physical activity.

This programme simply teaches youth to balance their energy intake with their energy needs, and to do so on a permanent basis, rather than on the transient basis which is more typical of diets.

"One reason these programs might be more effective is that they require youth to take a more healthy perspective, which leads them to internalise the more healthy attitudes.

"In addition, these programs have simple take-home messages, which may be easier to remember in the future than messages from more complex prevention programmes," said Lead Researcher Eric Stice of Oregon Research Institute.

In their study, the researchers found that their programme reduced the risk for onset of eating disorders by 61 per cent and obesity by 55 per cent in young women — the effects continued for three years after the programme ended.

"These results are noteworthy because, to date, the idea that we can reduce the risk for future onset of eating disorders and obesity has been an unrealised goal — over 80 prevention programmes have been evaluated, but no previous program had been found to significantly reduce risk for onset of these serious health problems," Stice said. (PTI)

UK firms to auction rare Indian coins over internet

LONDON, Apr 30: Rare coins issued in India before and during the British rule will be sold at an internet auction by the prominent London-based numismatics firm Baldwin’s next week.

The coins for sale on May 6 have been divided into several lots: Those belonging to the Bengal Presidency, Bombay Presidency, Madras Presidency and Colonial and regal coinage lots.

The coins on sale include those from princely states and Independent Kingdoms Lots, Mughal lots, Portuguese India Lots and the French India Lot.

On May 7, Kushan and Gupta Coins Lots will be auctioned, along with other Indian Coinage Lots.

Baldwin’s auctions were the first numismatic auction house in the UK to offer live audio-bidding on the internet. During the auction, people can bid on-line with sound. (PTI)

Booklet on wartime sex slavery published

TOKYO, Apr 30: A newly published booklet detailing sexual slavery by the imperial Japanese army has been published to serve as a bridge between the victims and those who have not had sufficient opportunity to learn about the history of such wartime atrocities.

"Field work — `comfort women’ of the Japanese Army," compiled by the women’s active museum on war and peace in Tokyo, or wam, is a general history of sex slavery — why it was launched, how it was managed, how "comfort women" were procured and what happened to them after the war — and includes testimonies of former comfort women from 10 countries. (AGENCIES)